


Throws Me to the Ground (I can't get back up)

by karrenia_rune



Category: Devil Went Down to Georgia - Charlie Daniels Band (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 23:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17590658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune





	Throws Me to the Ground (I can't get back up)

"Throws Me to the Ground" 

 

John Hayes, known as Johnny to his friends, neighbors, heck, most everyone in his small town and the environs was a good egg but he had his eccentricities. 

As a boy, he'd run wild always on the lookout for what he could discover beyond the next bend, the next hill. A scrawny boy growing up with wiry muscles and a look in his eyes that folks used to say that he had the height and showed the promise of growing into one day.

His folks fondly smiled and said their son had a penchant for finding trouble that no one else could. Whatever the case might be, he found a grounding of sorts in all kinds of music. 

When it seemed that he could no longer contain his restless energy he could be found drumming on improvised instruments, or down at the church and joining on the local drumming circles; these he was invited back more and more often.

When turned 12 his father gave him the fiddle that had been passed down in their family from one generation to another until it was finally his. Johnny loved that fiddle and practiced playing it and learning what he could from anyone who could teach him.

That's how he first came across the man with the gravelly voice and the trunk full of product samples that he said were sponsored by his company. The man said that this was just a side job, something to pass the time while he pursued his true passion, finding talent.

Johnny did think to ask too many questions of the probing kind for he had not yet learned to be suspicious of strangers, especially ones offering something nothing. He learned to do so later on.

The man promised to make him famous. Until then, Johnny had thought he had wanted nothing more than to be somebody, a household name in the community and maybe just over the town line whenever he could get gigs either as a solo act or a part of a bluegrass band. He was good either way. 

Fame and fortune and the admiring glances of young women? That was not to be scoffed at. "How much do you want up front? In some part of himself, Johnny remembered that his father was an accountant and he'd want to know that this stranger was legit.

The talent scout smiled and produced a contract and told him he would give him this one evening to look it over and sign it. Johnny nodded and agreed.  
The following morning Johnny met up with the talent scout with the signed contract in hand. He took it and it was most likely his imagination playing tricks on him, but Johnny could have sworn he saw the man lick his lips and his eyes glint yellow in the early morning dusk.

Later that evening, at the town hall, Johnny and his band played to a sold out crowd and it was something inside of him that he been long dormant had awoken. If it feels like something else that was delicate and ill-defined had been lost along the way well, Johnny had never been the soul-searching type.

At fifteen Johnny was in high school and still riding high on that promised fame and fortune, got himself a girlfriend named Mercedes Lopez, and they were outisde of school on the quad.

"What's going on, baby?" Mercedes asked, twirling her ring finger through a loose ringlet of brown hair. "I thought you wanted to make out."

"I, I, do you mind if we take a rain-check, there's something I wanna check out."

"Don't take too long," Mercedes replied.

In the back of the school, where kids came to make out or smoke or often some combination of the two, Johnny ran into the devil once more. 

This time he wasn't dressed as a traveling salesman but as an English Oxford student but from the 18th century. "Pretty young thing you've got there, son. It would simply terrible if something happened to her."

Johnny eyed the man's attire with a critical air and wondered what he must have down in a previous life to deserve this. "Why are you dressed like that?'

"Oh, this old thing. We're at a school I thought I should dress the part. Isn't this what teenagers are wearing these days?"

"No, and first of all, wrong century, second of all, wrong country." That was when it sunk in with a feeling of a sucker punch to the gut what the other had said about his girlfriend. "Do what you want to me, but leave my family and Mercedes out it!"

"Very well, I agree. All you have to do is run a few errands now and again."

Johnny grit his teeth and bunched his hands into fists against the side of jean-clad legs wondering not for the first time that just once he could find a way to get out of this damn contract; pun not intended.

At eighteen he ran into trouble with the law, damn those errands! 

He figured the fiddle case was still in the trunk of the car where he had left it and took the case and ran as if the devil who had been pursuing for the last six years of his life were indeed right behind him instead of the distance but getting closer piercing sound of police car sirens. 

He reached the car, tore open the driver side door, threw the gun into the backseat and tore hell-bent for leather. Thinking as he did so, 'If the nights are cold and the fiddle is old, run, boy, run.'

At 21, Johnny was buying beer at the liquor store

The devil manifests either in the back seat of Johnny's car. No tricks, no strings, no shenanigans, not even something as straightforward as a business deal."

"Whatever it is your selling, you bent-legged sonofabitch, I'm not interested. Haven't you already done enough to ruin my life!"

"Johnny!" his unwanted passenger wheedled as if his feelings had been hurt by the harsh accusation."You wound me to my probably non-existent heart. No, no, I probably deserve that. I have enjoyed our little visits over what has it been? Almost a decade?"

"Seems about right," Johnny replied. "Is something you plan to do in the future? Because if so, I want out."

"Contrary to popular belief, some of us infernal beings do possess what you mortals call ah, knowing the difference between right and wrong."

"Yeah right," scoffed Johnny.

"Oh, let me get right to the point then, I've come to the conclusion that we would much better off as friends than as adversaries. That do anything for ya, Johnny boy?"

For the first time in his life, Johnny Hayes had nothing to say. Instead, he nearly took a header into a ditch before he could right the car and get back on the road. "I must be losing mind. Fine, fine, but this goes two ways. For once, you listen to me, or no dice."

"You got it, old bean."


End file.
